Okakura graduated (1880) from Tokyo Imperial University. Soon thereafter he met Ernest Fenollosa, an American art critic and amateur painter who, while teaching at Tokyo University, had become the preeminent voice in defending Japan’s traditional art forms against the drive to modernization and westernization of the early Meiji Restoration. Under his influence Okakura worked toward reeducating the Japanese people to appreciate their own cultural heritage. He was one of the principal founders of the Tokyo Fine Arts School, opened in 1887, and a year later became its head. He and Fenollosa, also teaching there, intentionally omitted Western painting and sculpture from the new school’s curriculum. In 1898 Okakura was ousted from the school in an administrative struggle. He next established the Nippon Bijutsu-in (Japan Academy of Fine Arts) with the help of such followers as Hishida Shunsō and Yokoyama Taikan.

A frequent traveler abroad, at the turn of the century Okakura became curator of the Oriental art division of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. His enthusiasm for traditional Japanese art often led him to assert the superiority of Oriental over Western art. Many of his works, such as The Ideals of the East (1903), The Awakening of Japan (1904), and The Book of Tea (1906), were written in English in order to spread abroad his ideas.